Decolonizing conservation - shortcomings of NAMWC

[Hydrophilic]

Here are a couple recent articles I found interesting (Gathered from http://salishseanews.blogspot.com)

How to Decolonize Conservation | Hakai Magazine

Drawing on examples from existing conservation projects and their own experiences, Indigenous researchers are unpacking what a decolonized approach to environmental protection should look like.

hakaimagazine.com

An Indigenous Scientist On Purging Colonialist Practices From Science

Western science is built upon harmful research practices in Indigenous communities. Jessica Hernandez writes about how this can change.

www.sciencefriday.com

Decolonizing Conservation, key takeaways
-Need for whole ecosystem approach
-Need for place based stewardship
-Need for looking beyond western science and including all local knowledge input
-Working with indigenous communities as equals

Some intriguing concepts. It's not hard to see the shortcomings of our present North American Model of Wildlife Conservation, if you look with an open mind.

Take this tenet of the North American model, for instance.
Science is the Proper Tool for Discharge of Wildlife Policy.

There are a number of circumstances where science has only recently caught up with indigenous knowledge. For example, aspirin is one of the most popular drugs in the world, patented by Bayer in the late 1800's. The active ingredient is Salicylic acid. Indigenous people have been using willow bark, which contains Salicin, for thousands of years as an anti-inflammatory and analgesic. When consumed, Salicin breaks down into Salicylic acid.

Another example: If you hunt on big game trails or migration corridors you may find lithic scatter. I hunt or hike on some old game trails and regularly see obsidian or chert projectile points along these trails. These projectile points can be dated based on their style, and many are thousands of years old. Indigenous knowledge knew/know many of these migration routes and many still remain undocumented by western science, and therefore unprotected. How many corridors have we lost because GPS technology hasn't yet revealed them? Or, more importantly, how many could we have more adequately preserved if we worked more regularly with local indigenous knowledge?

Place based stewardship and Pacific Northwest salmon. For thousands of years indigenous people operated 'terminal' fisheries. That is to say, harvest was local. You can have a better sense of the health of local salmon stocks when you...harvest them locally. This also gives you more control and stewardship of the resource. With western science we continue to use overcomplicated computations to overfish decreasing salmon stocks in the ocean, where it is virtually impossible to know which rivers the fish originate from.

How many times have local communities tried to provide federal or state officials with knowledge of local species? In one of the provided articles an indigenous person tried to get officials to document grizzly bears in a new area, only to be routinely ignored. Last time I checked, ODFW still has not acknowledged a wolf pack in one of the areas I hunt despite photographic evidence.

There are many more examples. I think both of these articles offer some valid points to consider.

 

[CowboyLeroy]

When you say "decolonizing" you probably won't get as far as saying "government pulling their heads out of the sand and listening to the people" and I'd imagine most modern day Native American peoples can tell you as much about this stuff as I can about scotland.

 

[hossblur]

Here are a couple recent articles I found interesting (Gathered from http://salishseanews.blogspot.com)

How to Decolonize Conservation | Hakai Magazine

Drawing on examples from existing conservation projects and their own experiences, Indigenous researchers are unpacking what a decolonized approach to environmental protection should look like.

hakaimagazine.com

An Indigenous Scientist On Purging Colonialist Practices From Science

Western science is built upon harmful research practices in Indigenous communities. Jessica Hernandez writes about how this can change.

www.sciencefriday.com

Decolonizing Conservation, key takeaways
-Need for whole ecosystem approach
-Need for place based stewardship
-Need for looking beyond western science and including all local knowledge input
-Working with indigenous communities as equals

Some intriguing concepts. It's not hard to see the shortcomings of our present North American Model of Wildlife Conservation, if you look with an open mind.

Take this tenet of the North American model, for instance.
Science is the Proper Tool for Discharge of Wildlife Policy.

There are a number of circumstances where science has only recently caught up with indigenous knowledge. For example, aspirin is one of the most popular drugs in the world, patented by Bayer in the late 1800's. The active ingredient is Salicylic acid. Indigenous people have been using willow bark, which contains Salicin, for thousands of years as an anti-inflammatory and analgesic. When consumed, Salicin breaks down into Salicylic acid.

Another example: If you hunt on big game trails or migration corridors you may find lithic scatter. I hunt or hike on some old game trails and regularly see obsidian or chert projectile points along these trails. These projectile points can be dated based on their style, and many are thousands of years old. Indigenous knowledge knew/know many of these migration routes and many still remain undocumented by western science, and therefore unprotected. How many corridors have we lost because GPS technology hasn't yet revealed them? Or, more importantly, how many could we have more adequately preserved if we worked more regularly with local indigenous knowledge?

Place based stewardship and Pacific Northwest salmon. For thousands of years indigenous people operated 'terminal' fisheries. That is to say, harvest was local. You can have a better sense of the health of local salmon stocks when you...harvest them locally. This also gives you more control and stewardship of the resource. With western science we continue to use overcomplicated computations to overfish decreasing salmon stocks in the ocean, where it is virtually impossible to know which rivers the fish originate from.

How many times have local communities tried to provide federal or state officials with knowledge of local species? In one of the provided articles an indigenous person tried to get officials to document grizzly bears in a new area, only to be routinely ignored. Last time I checked, ODFW still has not acknowledged a wolf pack in one of the areas I hunt despite photographic evidence.

There are many more examples. I think both of these articles offer some valid points to consider.

I listened(watched) to Rinella. He went fishing with "indigenous" folks. He wore polarized glasses. He later learned that the "indigenous"folks had adopted those glasses. Seems the old ways are great, until better shows up.


It's a wrongheaded assumption to treat one group of humans, as different humans. The tribes were evolving prior to Europeans. They would have evolved without them. They also would have continued to breed. There is some weird romanticism of "indigenous" as being stuck in time. More people would mean more demands on a resource. And frankly, without real agriculture, there would of been more conflict among people for resources. Leading to invention to kill, or invention to take. Same as European desires and outcome.

The cheap easy way to debunk the points would be to say, go visit a reservation or two and see how "indigenous" stewardship is going.

Humans are simply predators. They are destructive. Subject to the same boom bust cycles. That's all humans. Not just the blue eyed ones.

Local is only local until the other tribe takes over.

Sad science has become a team sport, on that I agree

 

[Bluffgruff]

By our own modern standards:
Most coveted mule deer hunting in the world: Jicarilla
Most coveted Elk hunting: white mtn and san carlos, toss in Acoma
Sheep hunts on the Taos, anyone?

 

[CowboyLeroy]

View attachment 220523
By our own modern standards:
Most coveted mule deer hunting in the world: Jicarilla
Most coveted Elk hunting: white mtn and san carlos, toss in Acoma
Sheep hunts on the Taos, anyone?

Reservations are just giant private ranches

 

[TheTone]

Reservations are just giant private ranches

Or devoid of game. Doesn’t seem to be much in the middle

 

[antlerradar]

View attachment 220523
By our own modern standards:
Most coveted mule deer hunting in the world: Jicarilla
Most coveted Elk hunting: white mtn and san carlos, toss in Acoma
Sheep hunts on the Taos, anyone?

There are a few reservations up north that don't live up to those standards, To be fair though those reservations are faring better than the near by public land.

 

[RobertD]

It's tricky. There's a lot of momentum in the academic world for decolonization of certain fields; I've had conversations with experts about the pros and cons of "decolonizing" classes, courses, disciplines in certain fields as well. There's an epistemological issue that's hard to get around for me, even if I can move past the assumption that our current positivist/scientific/Enlightenment model is the be-all end-all model for wildlife management or life in general.

Aspirin example is a good one. Because on the one hand, we can see Indigenous knowledge in action in that example. But on the other, we still use our own epistemological basis to see how that process works and more importantly to confirm that it can be replicated purposefully.

True decolonization means we lose that part too, though - it's not as simple as including the knowledge held by "outside" groups, true decolonization also accepts ways of knowing, as held by the same groups.

If we adopt a model of decolonized conservation practices, we have to be careful of places where that above phrase "ways of knowing" conflicts with the kind of empiricism we use to manage wildlife. Ignoring that is how we get more things like the Alaska caribou closures.

With all that said as a warning, I'm sure there is a lot of positive that comes with these kinds of ideas. I'm just leery of the bad ones.

 

[Hydrophilic]

Possibly, and more importantly, @RobertD, the Nuggets are going down tonight.

 

[RobertD]

Possibly, and more importantly, @RobertD, the Nuggets are going down tonight.

LOL, they probably are. I'm not actually a big Nuggets fan per se, but I like Jokic and at some point decided he should be my profile pic. I do wish their other guys could get healthy so I could see him make a deep playoff run one of these years though.

 

[AvidIndoorsman]

Here are a couple recent articles I found interesting (Gathered from http://salishseanews.blogspot.com)

How to Decolonize Conservation | Hakai Magazine

Drawing on examples from existing conservation projects and their own experiences, Indigenous researchers are unpacking what a decolonized approach to environmental protection should look like.

hakaimagazine.com

An Indigenous Scientist On Purging Colonialist Practices From Science

Western science is built upon harmful research practices in Indigenous communities. Jessica Hernandez writes about how this can change.

www.sciencefriday.com

Decolonizing Conservation, key takeaways
-Need for whole ecosystem approach
-Need for place based stewardship
-Need for looking beyond western science and including all local knowledge input
-Working with indigenous communities as equals

Some intriguing concepts. It's not hard to see the shortcomings of our present North American Model of Wildlife Conservation, if you look with an open mind.

How to Decolonize Conservation | Hakai Magazine

Drawing on examples from existing conservation projects and their own experiences, Indigenous researchers are unpacking what a decolonized approach to environmental protection should look like.

hakaimagazine.com

The North American model is built on an underlying assumption—one rooted in settler culture’s tendency to overexploit resources. The model assumes that humans damage nature. Preserving land, therefore, means regulating people or fencing them out. Such decisions usually come from on high, often from national, state, or provincial governments.

This seems more applicable to NPS rather than state management via hunting. The article in several more places seems to conflate conservation on a global scale, for instance in Africa, with the North American model. I'm not entirely sure if they author understands the NA model.

In fact, on the 25 percent of lands worldwide managed or owned by Indigenous peoples, ecosystems are healthier and biodiversity is even higher than in protected conservation areas.

So on 75% of owned Indigenous lands it's worse?

Another step toward decolonizing conservation, says Housty, is for settler governments to work with Indigenous communities as equals rather than as just one of many stakeholders. Resource stewardship should be inseparable from Indigenous sovereignty, assert the study’s authors.

This is essentially what happened this year in Alaska. The feds kicked all non-local hunters off of federal land and gave exclusive, unlimited (bag limit of 5 per day, with out reporting requirements) to locals.

So, and I feel like I'm being accurate here, the working with indigenous groups in that context meant they were the only stake holder that the federal government worked with and that subsistence was given primacy over herd management and mixed use.

Also in the US indigenous groups do have sovereignty and resource management. The state does not manage wildlife on reservations, and via the AK example above and because of the Herrera vs Wyoming allows some indigenous access not bound by state oversight.

The author uses the BC salmon example, and seems to suggest that the correct course of action is again not allowing mixed use.


I guess my reaction is 1. I wish this paper or conversation could be had with someone with a deep knowledge of the current system and how it works and 2. That as explained and via recent events it seems like this push is for one stakeholder to gain exclusive use.

Hard for me to read about the bulls for Billionaires thread and not see the parallels with regards to a group wanting unfettered resource control that isn't restrained by scientific management.

 

[Oak]

They also would have continued to breed.

Interesting way of putting it.

 

[RobertD]

Hard for me to read about the bulls for Billionaires thread and not see the parallels with regards to a group wanting unfettered resource control that isn't restrained by scientific management

100%, feels like it's all part of the meta theme of Western public land use in the 21st century, which is basically the spiritual equivalent of a new Manifest Destiny at this point

 

[CowboyLeroy]

Or devoid of game. Doesn’t seem to be much in the middle

Much like a lot of ranches. All I'm trying to say is it's not a fair comparison to public land, especially when it's managed for opportunity

 

[AvidIndoorsman]

100%, feels like it's all part of the meta theme of Western public land use in the 21st century, which is basically the spiritual equivalent of a new Manifest Destiny at this point

I've read a number of these articles and listened bunch of podcast on this theme.

Currently I'm unconvinced that the most pragmatic approach isn't mixed sustainable use, I understand that this approach is deeply frustrating to lots of groups, BIPOC, big land owners, industry, etc in one way or another, but I don't see a way of reconciling 300+ years of history.

 

[Gerald Martin]

If you boil this concept down to its logical conclusion the whole premise is based on racism.

The idea that indigenous peoples are better stewards of the land and wildlife because they are indigenous is the same fallacy based on a belief of superior culture and values that caused European settlers to over exploit and exterminate anything deemed undesirable based on their value system and ignorance of the long term consequences of their actions.

Part of the fact that indigenous people didn’t have a significant negative impact on wildlife and resources was because they lacked the technological advantages to easily overexploit wildlife.

They had different values concerning wildlife than European setters did as well. Those values might have kept over exploitation in check or it might not have.

Tragically, indigenous people and cultures were destroyed or fractured during the excesses of colonization.

Look at modern examples of the descendants of indigenous peoples. Those groups who look at the reality of the needs of the wildlife under their management and blend their values and scientific knowledge of “best” biological practices have thriving wildlife populations within the lands they manage.

Those groups which have adopted modern technologies and have kept the mentality of harvesting whatever, wherever, whenever they want have lands that have way less wildlife than surrounding areas not affected by their management practices.

Should indigenous knowledge and values be part of the conversation regarding wildlife management? Absolutely, if it’s harmonious with the biological needs of wildlife resources. If those values and knowledge are harmful to the resource then they need to adapt and change to reflect the current realities of the landscape today.

Values and practices have been in a state of constant change since the beginning of human existence. The intentional consideration of indigenous values and knowledge while making current day policies should absolutely be included. But acceptance of a practice that with modern technology is harmful to wildlife resources should never be preferred just because it is “indigenous”.

Good ideas and practices are good regardless of the skin color or culture of the people practicing them. Bad ideas are bad ideas regardless of the skin color or culture of the practitioners.

 

[AvidIndoorsman]

Good ideas and practices are good regardless of the skin color or culture of the people practicing them. Bad ideas are bad ideas regardless of the skin color or culture of the practitioners.

Agreed.

On a macro scale we are talking about humans and other animals. Ethnicity and culture are entirely human constructs.

As Mr. Newberg says peace not justice, the NA model is 100% not about justice.

 

[VikingsGuy]

I believe we have to treat people better than we have. I believe that we have a moral duty to repair the damage done to underrepresented groups by our history. But I reject the premise that group A is wiser than group B in all matters or vice-versa. I reject that if the old way was group A is good and group B is bad then our path towards bettering humanity is to now declare A is bad and B is good - because that is exactly how we got into this mess in the first place. I believe every human is deserving of equal dignity and value - something we could not say in America until at least 1970 and likely still not fully the case - but I also reject the demeaning and condescending "noble savage" trope white elites like to keep running up the flag pole.

As for science - I believe non-white non-male ideas have consistently been devalued in the field of science (first-hand knowledge) - but that this is a human problem, not a scientific problem. (I suggest watching "Picture a Scientist" on Netflix) We need better humans in science, not to turn our backs on the scientific method itself. We need more diversity of voices, more diversity of thought, more inclusion of the "other" and better listening overall - take all that insight and run the scientific process and good will come from it. Tear down science and we will be left with mysticism and tribal politics to answer all of our most pressing questions - that is not a great option.

 

[AvidIndoorsman]

Tear down science and we will be left with mysticism and tribal politics to answer all of our most pressing questions - that is not a great option.

Damn that settler-colonial vocab is inescapable.

 

[VikingsGuy]

If you boil this concept down to its logical conclusion the whole premise is based on racism.

The idea that indigenous peoples are better stewards of the land and wildlife because they are indigenous is the same fallacy based on a belief of superior culture and values that caused European settlers to over exploit and exterminate anything deemed undesirable based on their value system and ignorance of the long term consequences of their actions.

Part of the fact that indigenous people didn’t have a significant negative impact on wildlife and resources was because they lacked the technological advantages to easily overexploit wildlife.

They had different values concerning wildlife than European setters did as well. Those values might have kept over exploitation in check or it might not have.

Tragically, indigenous people and cultures were destroyed or fractured during the excesses of colonization.

Look at modern examples of the descendants of indigenous peoples. Those groups who look at the reality of the needs of the wildlife under their management and blend their values and scientific knowledge of “best” biological practices have thriving wildlife populations within the lands they manage.

Those groups which have adopted modern technologies and have kept the mentality of harvesting whatever, wherever, whenever they want have lands that have way less wildlife than surrounding areas not affected by their management practices.

Should indigenous knowledge and values be part of the conversation regarding wildlife management? Absolutely, if it’s harmonious with the biological needs of wildlife resources. If those values and knowledge are harmful to the resource then they need to adapt and change to reflect the current realities of the landscape today.

Values and practices have been in a state of constant change since the beginning of human existence. The intentional consideration of indigenous values and knowledge while making current day policies should absolutely be included. But acceptance of a practice that with modern technology is harmful to wildlife resources should never be preferred just because it is “indigenous”.

Good ideas and practices are good regardless of the skin color or culture of the people practicing them. Bad ideas are bad ideas regardless of the skin color or culture of the practitioners.

AND, many of those good ideas were never formed because of a systematic lack of opportunity for some to participate in education and innovation efforts, and a culture that placed less value on the ideas that were offered by non-white non-male scientists. Science tells us all human brains fall evenly across the IQ spectrum - if we have a world where only 5-10% of our brains (white, male, western, educated) get nurtured, educated, encouraged, and listened to it is humbling to think of all the great innovations we have lost. We have begun to make some progress but we are only 50 years from segregation - and there is good scientific data that shows that the sciences routinely under-promote the work of women and POC.

For example in 2020, female scientists in China and Brazil account for about 50% of innovations new enough and valuable enough to warrant a patent. In the US and western Europe, the number is closer to 17%. I don't have numbers for race as that is not tracked by the patent office, but I would expect a similar story.

We are tribal beings and there is no doubt we used this to routinely ignore the "other". Race, religion, and gender all played a big part in who got to have a "serious idea" over the time window of the industrial revolution and enlightenment. It is not racism to point that out and suggest we fix some of our mess. That being said, the 180 reversal of the "chosen" and the "other" is no improvement at all - here I am sure we are aligned.